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Barry Millman, Ph.D., has been a consultant for over 25 years, an instructor, course developer, and award-winning speaker. For the past seven years he has been researching and creating resources to help organizations create great User Documents. Visit: http://www.greatuserdocs.com for resources to help you create the content and access that your Users want and need.
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Great Technical Writing: the User-product Life Cycle - a Documentation ToolThe User-Product Life Cycle (U-PLC) is a powerful tool for the User Document writer. Use the U-PLC to generate the high-level topics for your User Document. Great Technical Writing: Tell your Users What to ExpectIn your User Documentation, you direct your Reader to perform tasks with your product. If you don't tell your Reader what to expect when performing those tasks, you will have a baffled Reader, resulting in dissatisfaction and expensive calls to technical support. How Poor In-house User Documents Cost you Twice & What to Do About itMany organizations produce in-house tools or modify commercially-available tools for their own use. These tools should get documented so they are of use to others in the organization.
If this documentation is not created or is poorly written, it costs you twice. Great Technical Writing: User Document Headings Should be Guideposts, not AdvertisementsMost heading are designed to entice us to read further. Headings in User Documents should enable your Reader to decide whether or not to continue reading that section. Use effective headings to make it easy for your Reader to access and understand your User Document. Great Technical Writing: Improve your Readers' Access With a Visual IndexPeople are visual creatures. They look at your product, and see, for example, a button or display. They want to find out about that control or indicator. A Visual Index is a simple but powerful document access tool that enables your Readers to find the information that they want.
This article describes the Visual Index concept and tells how to create one for your document. Benefits of Creating User Documents In-houseFor small companies, creating their product's User Documentation in-house, provides benefits to the company, to (idle) staff, and to the product. This article describes the benefits and some downsides of producing User Documents in-house. New Technical Writer: Avoiding the Interview-writing DisconnectLost or garbled information is a terrible waste. Especially if it's the information you gathered from an interview and must now write into your User Document. Here's how to prevent that waste. New Technical Writer: Don't Confuse your Reader With your WordsStop confusing your Reader with the words you use. Your Reader is trying his/her best to understand how your product works without having to figure out your writing. Here are some writing guidelines to help you stop baffling your Reader. Great Technical Writing: Improve Document SearchesSearches in User Documents (manuals, etc.) often fail because the Reader uses different words for a concept than the author uses. Since the Reader's words do not appear in the document, the document search mechanism cannot find them, resulting in frustration. This article describes a User-friendly technique for improving searches, without having to change the Users' behavior or the search software. New Technical Writer: Use the Persona to Create the Most Useful Section of your User DocumentA good User Document includes sections on how to set up, use, and care for the product. However, to create a great User Document , the technical writer should use the Persona, generated in the analysis of the User/Reader, to create the topics for the most useful section of the User Document. This article describes this procedure.
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